The company used its recent AGM to announce that trading results for the first four months of the 2010/11 financial year were “meaningfully above” the 2009/10 financial year, though it did not provide specific figures.

Paperlinx posted a loss after tax of $225.3m for 2009/10, describing it as “the most difficult year in its history”.

The company also used the AGM as a way of introducing shareholders to incoming chief executive Toby Marchant (pictured), who took over on 1 November after former chief executive Tom Park was cut.

Marchant said that one of the key platforms for growth was the “freedom from the corporate distractions of the last two years”. Company secretary James Orr told ProPrint this referred to the company’s recent exit from manufacturing and internal refinancing.

“Those activities really meant that a lot of senior management’s time was spent focusing on those activities,” he said.

“With that out of the way and with the change in management, the focus now is very much on the fundamentals.”

Orr said that as well as returning its focus to core markets, Paperlinx is “accelerating diversification” into markets such as sign and display, graphics consumables, and industrial packaging.

Orr said that the company was also gearing its salesforce for the diversification into these markets.

“We need to ensure we’ve got the best people. In some cases we have them, in some cases we need to recruit them.”

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